Nokia says Symbian now closed-source
updated 09:45 am EDT, Fri April 8, 2011
Nokia says Symbian now closed platform
Nokia this week confirmed that its decision to take down online distributions of Symbian was actually the effective end to Symbian as an open-source platform. Although it republished the code this month, it has since said it the code was only under a closed-source license and couldn't be legally used for any purpose without a commercial deal. The code was only online to help Japanese phone makers still using Symbian and to help existing platform partners, H Online was told.
The open-source version of Symbian still exists on an unofficial code dump page, but it includes only the code from before when the Symbian Foundation took down the open-source version.
Symbian fans have been frustrated at the move since Nokia has gone so far as to tout that "we are open," even after publishing closed-source code. Nokia had for the longest time promoted its phones as running on an open platform but has since given it up in an attempt to control the experience. Partly because it no longer has to publish open code, the company has promised temporarily holding out on Android 3.0 until the code is optimized well enough to run on phones.
